This Behavior Will Make You Miserable
Date Posted: August 27, 2020
Posted In: Discussion, Ideas,
by John P. Weiss
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I’ll bet you’ve seen this dozens of times at work. Something doesn’t get done or a project falls through. The accountability game begins, and the excuses fly. Fingers are pointed.
Your manager questions someone on your team. The team member swears he sent the invoice and suggests Suzie was responsible for follow-up. Suzie fumes at the accusation, and claims that George was tasked with sending the invoice. “And we all know how distracted George can get,” Suzie adds.
An angry George lists three times in the last month that Suzie failed to respond to his emails, and then turns on Doug, saying, “Doug was lead on this project, how come he didn’t stay on top of the deliverables?”
The only winner in this workplace dustup is Peter Flannigan, who owns the pub across the street where everyone will go after work to drink and commiserate in their respective cliques.
“Accountability separates the wishers in life from the action-takers that care enough about their future to account for their daily actions.”-John Di Lemme
Nobody likes to take responsibility when things go wrong. It’s much easier to deflect, deny, sidestep, and point the finger at others.
What’s worse, this type of behavior doesn’t just happen in the workplace. It happens at home too and in our relationships.
What is this unhealthy behavior that feels good but eventually makes us miserable?
Blame.
A negative mental state
According to an article by Chris Smith in Filevine.com, blame is contagious. Here’s an excerpt from the article:
“In 2009, the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology released a study about the blame contagion. Psychologists Nathanael Fast and Larissa Tiedens conducted four experiments to determine if and why blame seems to spread from person to person. What they found was that the ‘blame contagion encourages a person to engage in blaming behaviors shortly after being exposed to another individual making a blame attribution for a failure.’ When we see someone defending themselves and blaming others, we reflexively defend ourselves as well.”
We deflect and place blame on others in order to protect ourselves and our self-image. Projecting the responsibility onto others is a defense mechanism that does little to help us grow or become more effective, mature individuals.
We think that blaming others will protect our reputation, but usually, it sullies our reputation. Most often people know who screwed up at work. When the guilty party fails to take responsibility by blaming others, we think less of that person.
Beyond the damage to our reputation, blaming others also damages our health. As the Filevine article notes:
“Blaming others and holding blame inside yourself creates a negative mental state. ‘The data that negative mental states cause heart problems is just stupendous. The data is just as established as smoking, and the size of the effect is the same,’ says Dr. Charles Raison. Further, he estimates that 90% of illness originates from negative mental states caused by stress, namely — you guessed it — blame.”
Resentment is like drinking poison
Beyond the workplace, blame is equally damaging in relationships. To both the blamer and the recipient.
Consider the husband who finds fault with everything you do. He complains that your job intrudes on your relationship. He belittles your hobby because he thinks you should be more focused on him.
He‘s blaming you when the real problem is his own insecurity. Rather than do the hard work of fixing himself, he blames you for everything. It’s easier than taking responsibility for his own dissatisfaction. But in the end, he’s sowing resentment in you.
“Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” -Saint Augustine
Resentments slowly build in us. We collect them like ammunition for a rainy day. And when the dark clouds billow and emotional humidity rises, we load the ammo in our defensive gun and take aim.